


Solo Flight

by Sorran



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: 101 euphemisms for wanking, Crack, Humor, M/M, Rickyl Writers' Group, Rickyl Writers' Group Bingo 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 22:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6095571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorran/pseuds/Sorran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl catches Rick red-handed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solo Flight

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a crazy plot bunny on the [Rickyl Writers' Group](http://rickylwritersgroup.tumblr.com/) chat, and look what it grew into!
> 
> Thank you to the sneak previewers/betas four, you guys rock!
> 
> For the RWG Bingo Challenge: Sticky.

As if being caught jerking off in the shower by Daryl wasn’t embarrassing enough, Daryl has to go and be an ass about it. 

“Flicking the bean again?” he grins as he slides onto a chair next to Rick at breakfast, demonstratively stirring his own bowl of baked beans.

Rick shoots him a murderous glare and then scowls as he feels himself blushing despite himself.

“Hey man, come on”, Daryl lightly bumps Rick’s shoulder with his own. “Can’t hold your sausage hostage forever.” He shovels a spoon full of beans into his mouth and looks out the window, for all intents and purposes contemplating the view of the quiet Alexandria streets.

“Shut up”, Rick hisses out of the corner of his mouth, eyes flicking around the room to make sure nobody overheard him. But Carl’s busy feeding Judith, Carol is scrubbing a casserole dish in the sink, and Michonne already left the house.

“No man, I get it”, Daryl assures him, facing him again. “Sometimes you gotta slap the salami. ’S cool.”

Rick thinks there’s a mischievous gleam in Daryl’s eyes, but then Daryl looks nothing but sympathetic again, and for a second Rick isn’t sure he wasn’t imagining things. He narrows his eyes at Daryl.

“Wha’?” Daryl mumbles, mouth full, and then has to pretend to scrape the last of the beans into his mouth to hide his grin as Rick abruptly pushes his half-finished breakfast away and gets up.

“I’m gonna head out”, he announces. “Find out what job Deanna has lined up for me.”

“‘Kay”, Daryl grunts. “Better unload your gun first though. Deanna’d have a fit if she knew you’re holding your own when everyone else handed theirs over.” With that he puts his empty bowl down by the sink, blithely ignoring both Carol’s confused look and Rick’s angry one, and slips out.

“What on earth was that about?” Carol lets the casserole dish sink into the dishwater to turn to Rick and gesticulate at him with the dish brush. “I thought you said you hid a gun outside the walls, not here in the house.”

Rick pinches the bridge of his nose with an exasperated sigh. “I’m not hiding a gun in the house”, he grinds through clenched teeth. 

“That’s not what Daryl said”, Carol points out, looking at Rick questioningly.

“Yeah, well, Daryl was talkin’ out of his ass”, Rick grumbles, before sighing again. “I’m sorry Carol”, he says. “Look, Daryl caught me”, ‘wanking in the shower’, Rick’s brain helpfully supplies, “on the wrong foot this morning, and this is his idea of being funny. There’s no gun in the house, I promise.” He gives Carol one of his patented earnest looks, and after a moment of consideration she shrugs and returns to the dishes.

~~~~~~~

Rick thinks - hopes - that maybe this is it, that Daryl’s made his point and will move on, but it would seem he has another think coming. Daryl’s nothing if not persistent. In an entirely atypical show of camaraderie, he tags along when Rick, still lacking a job mandate from Deanna but too restless to take a day off, joins the efforts to extend and reinforce the walls around the safe zone. 

Rick is assigned to the crew hammering wooden support struts into the ground, so he is relatively stationary while Daryl keeps moving back and forth as he helps cart the earth the diggers have piled up next to the post holes away to where Reg’s planning to set up another vegetable garden. Daryl’s working hard, so nobody bats an eyelid when he stops to exchange a few words with Rick every now and then. Rick on the other hand is starting to dread the sight of Daryl with his wheelbarrow, because Daryl misses no opportunity to rib him about what he saw in the morning, and boy, does he have an impressive list of euphemisms in his vocabulary. 

“Mind you don’t bang yourself”, he mutters on his first pass, and Rick shoots him a dark glare. 

When Daryl next passes, Rick has just hit himself on the thumb with his hammer and is cursing under his breath. 

“You alright?” Daryl asks. At Rick’s nod, he adds: “Told you to be careful with the five finger shuffle”, and is gone again before Rick can say anything.

The third time Daryl stops to talk to Rick he enquires whether Rick is still boxing with Richard, and Rick rolls his eyes at him. “It’s gettin’ old, Daryl”, he huffs.

Daryl just shrugs. “Nothin’ wrong with building upper-body strength. Helps you discover your own potential, ‘n’ next thing you know you’re doin’ all your own handiwork.” He lifts up the wheelbarrow and moves along to the next pile of earth on the line, leaving an open-mouthed and slightly dazed looking Rick behind. 

Tobin nearly dropping one of the heavy wooden beams on him pulls Rick out of his reverie. He focuses back on the task at hand, but his neck is starting to prickle every time Daryl comes near. He never realised just how aware he is of Daryl’s movements, even when he isn’t really looking. He does try to keep an eye out, but he still has a job to do, and it’s not as if he can make himself scarce every time Daryl walks past anyway.

Daryl commenting “Bit early to talk about varnishing your poles, ain’t it?” as he and Tobin are deep in a discussion about treating the struts with wood varnish once the support frames are finished almost makes Rick jump out of his skin.

“Jesus Christ, Daryl, will you just stop!” he snaps. “Enough already!” 

Ignoring the surprised and seemingly baffled looks Tobin and Daryl exchange respectively, he stomps over to the next set of pre-cut beams and starts lining them up with jerky movements, making Tobin hurry to catch up with him after one last confused glance at Daryl.

After that Rick keeps one eye on Daryl at all times, job or no, and when Daryl approaches again, he barks a pre-emptive: “Not a word, Daryl!”, much to Tobin’s bemusement. 

Daryl shakes his head at Rick. “Thought you could hold your own”, he says, sounding disappointed of all things. “You’re making the bald man cry.”

It’s the euphemism that breaks the camel’s back. Rick glowers at Daryl, face still set in an angry rictus, but then the corners of his mouth start twitching, his eyes crinkle and finally he erupts in all-out, booming belly laughter.

Daryl raises his eyebrows at Tobin with a shrug, but even through the tears streaming down his face Rick could swear the bastard is smirking with his eyes only. 

~~~~~~~

After dinner Daryl steps out onto the porch as usual. He goes for a smoke when he has any cigarettes; when he doesn’t he just stargazes, but he always goes outside before turning in for the night. 

Rick follows him a few minutes later but stops short of actually leaving the house, leaning in the doorway instead.

“You gon’ come out here or jus’ stand there like a doorpost?” Daryl asks him after several moments when Rick makes no attempt to join him on the porch.

Rick shrugs. “I don’t want to interrupt anything.”

“The hell d’you think you’d interrupt?” Daryl gruffs incredulously. “‘S jus’ me out here.”

“Yeah, well. You could be cocking your bow for all I know”, Rick replies nonchalantly.

For a moment Daryl just stares at him, then he barks out a sharp laugh. “That take you all day to come up with?” he retorts, but it sounds like he might be grinning. “Nah, you’re good”, he reassures. “Jus’ smokin’ a stick”, and there’s definitely a teasing tone to his voice now.

Rick’s already got one foot on the porch, and he groans at Daryl’s last comment. “Oh god, you can make everything sound dirty”, he complains, closing the door behind himself.

“Ain’t me”, Daryl shakes his head. “Tha’s all Merle. Where d’you think I got half of that shit?”

“Why am I not surprised”, Rick snorts.

“‘Cos you shouldn’t be”, Daryl answers easily, an expression of both fondness and sadness flitting across his face, now that Rick is close enough to see it in the weak light filtering out of the living room window. ”You met that sumbitch.” Daryl holds his cigarette out to Rick, and Rick accepts it for the peace offering it is.

“Yeah”, he nods, inhaling the biting smoke. “Real charmer. No offense.”

Daryl shrugs. “I know he was an asshole, ain’t news to me.” He takes the cigarette back when Rick hands it over and draws deeply, making the end glow brightly. “He did this to me once.”

“Did what?” Rick queries, stepping up to the railing next to Daryl to lean against the roof support opposite him.

“Walked in on me jacking it, and kept going on about it all day”, Daryl clarifies, passing the cigarette back to Rick. “He was a lot less subtle about it though. By afternoon his whole damn gang knew he’d caught me choking the chicken.”

As if on cue, Rick’s laugh turns into a coughing fit as he chokes on the heavy smoke in his lungs. “Kinda funny”, he wheezes once he has enough air to do so, waving the cigarette for Daryl to take off of him.

Daryl plucks it out of his fingers and takes one last pull. “Merle was about as funny as a fist to the face”, he says dismissively, dropping the stub of the cigarette and grinding it out under his heel. “Thought he was funny as fuck though. D’you know what he called innuendo?”

“What?” Rick asks weakly.

“Inyourendo”, Daryl says, deadpan.

Rick groans. “Oh god.”


End file.
